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Friday, 14 August 2015

Interpreting a visual

This
was my response to a question I had to answer in my Certificate Course at
CIEFL, Hyderabad in 1987.

The
Cartoon I have chosen is in Tamil.

The
Cartoon Scene:

A
cricket Test Match is on. Balram Jakkar, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, is the
straight umpire and R Venkatraman, the Leader of the Rajya Sabha, is the leg
umpire. Opposition parties are fielding. Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister, is
facing the bowling. The ball being bowled is the demand for discussion in
Parliament about the President—Prime Minister relationship, especially in the
light of the exchange of letters between the two P’s. An ‘opposition’ bowler
bowls Rajiv. Jakkar declares the delivered ball a ‘no ball’ and thus Rajiv ‘not
out’. Venkataraman from the other end says: ‘shut up! Not out!’ The bowler asks
exasperatedly: ‘If you abuse your office in this fashion, how can we ever get
him out?’ And Kapil Dev, the Indian Cricket Team Captain, thinks aloud: ‘If we
had the benefit of two such umpires, we should never lose a match!’

The
EFFECT the cartoonist intends

1. fear of loss of office,
favours

2. partisan attitude

Political 3. Abuse of office

4. mockery of democratic norms

1. fear of criticism

2. poor umpiring decisions

Cricket 3. Abuse of office

4. mockery of the game

Form

The
Cartoonist blends into one two independent but similar situations that have
arrested the attention and engaged the minds of the public for weeks. One is
the long-drawn battle between the opposition parties and the Officers of both
Houses of Parliament over the issue of President—Prime Minister relationship.
The other is the marred India-Pakistan cricket series (Tests and Onedayers)
besotted with poor and bad umpiring decisions.

The
result is a high class coffee the public tastes with relish:
decoction—political scene, milk—cricket scene and sugar—Cartoonist’s values.
It’s his original focus that makes us laugh and think.

Overall
content

Situation
One—background

It
all began with (at least as far as Parliament and the public were concerned)
when the President asked for clarifications regarding the Postal Bill waiting
his Assent. Then the cats began to come out of the bags one after another:
leakages, veiled accusations.

Content
(decoction)

Then
ensued a constitutional furore and the resultant refusals in both Houses by
their officious Officers for a discussion in Parliament about the President—Prime
Minister relationship on the premise (pretext, the cartoonist would perhaps
say) that the President was above and beyond discussion.

Situation
Two

Background

The
age-old rivalry between the two nations of the sub-continent reflects itself in
cricket, too. Imran Khan came to India with his personal ambition to defeat
India on her soil.

Content (milk)

Bat-pad
catches, lbw’s, caught-behinds, runouts had a controversial ring about them.
The umpires, overpowered by their desire to exhibit impartiality, afraid of
being criticised of being partisan, and harassed and bullied by the visiting
team took their duties too seriously and too overzealously and erred and erred
and went on erring that cost India the series and more than the series.

Unlike
in the political scene, here the situation is inverse and hence all the more
significant. Funnily enough, India, the home team, is the opposition party and
Pakistan, the visiting team, the ruling party. This adds to the richness of the
metaphor.

Sugar
(Cartoonist’s values)

In
both situations, the Officers of Parliament and the umpires are charged by the
oaths and the positions they hold with the sacred duty of protecting their
respective constitutions and the rights of people under the umbrella of their
authority.

Whether
it be overzealousness or personal considerations, the fact remains that they
have betrayed the trust, they have sided with one group, they have failed
miserably in the discharge of their duties, they have eroded people’s
confidence in the very system that forms the foundations of national philosophy
and thus been responsible for the consequent loss of faith in that system. They
have committed the crime of inaction in that they have protected the ‘strong’
and wrong action in that they have suppressed the ‘weak’.

Conclusion

The
humour is in Kapil Dev’s wishful thinking. The seriousness of today’s problem
in democratic India is aptly heightened by Kapil’s dreamy observation and the
bowler’s exasperated but rhetorical question.

Comment
by the evaluator

Good
but you could have commented more especially upon the choice of batsman,
umpires and bowler.

About Me

I hail from Thamizh Nadu, a Southern state of India. I speak Thamizh, Thelugu, English and Hindi.

I served for 43 years as a teacher of English in schools and colleges in India, Ethiopia and Nigeria. I've published several articles on ELT and of general interest in the USA, Ethiopia and India. I've presented several papers in national and international conferences. I've written several course books for the English syllabuses of Bachelor of Engineering of Madras University, Anna University and JNTU, Hyderabad, for public consumption as well.